Promoting open educational resources in Vietnamese higher education

International Conference "Proposed policy to promote open educational resources in Vietnamese higher education"organized by the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU in collaboration with the UNESCO Office in Vietnam, the National Center for Research and Development on Open Technology - Ministry of Science and Technology and the Vietnam Free and Open Source Software Club. The workshop was attended by experts, scientists from specialized agencies, Associations, Federations of Associations, governmental and non-governmental organizations and leaders of Library Centers of more than 40 universities nationwide.

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Kim - Vice Principal of the School affirmed:“As a developing country, open educational materials have special significance and importance for Vietnam. This will be a very valuable academic resource, effectively supporting training and scientific research activities, helping to fundamentally solve the difficulties in university educational materials for many years now."The University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU is a pioneer in Vietnam in studying, researching and promoting the movement of building and developing open educational resources(*). The Vice President of the University expressed his hope that the issues raised and discussed in this workshop will create an important premise for the issue of building and developing sustainable open educational resources in Vietnam to become practical, effectively serving the education and training work in general, as well as the process of self-study, self-research and lifelong learning of learners.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Kim, Vice Principal of the School delivered the opening speech at the workshop.

Speaking at the workshop, Associate Professor Dr. Le Quan, Vice President of VNU, said that along with the development of information technology, the development of open educational resources is necessary and contributes to encouraging scientific research activities, promoting equality in access to information. In addition, the development of open educational resources is a means to ensure intellectual property rights, transfer knowledge as well as publish scientific research results to the whole society.

During the workshop, scientists and experts on OER presented survey reports as well as proposed policies and organizations to implement OER development in Vietnamese higher education.

Dr. Nghiem Xuan Huy (Deputy Head of Science and Technology Department, VNU) presented a survey report on the use of open educational resources at Vietnamese universities.

The survey report on the use of open educational resources at Vietnamese universities shows that currently, the level of positivity in using open educational resources for training and learning purposes is quite high. Lecturers and students have exploited open educational resources as one of the important learning resources. However, some barriers in the process of implementing open educational resources were pointed out, such as limited awareness of OER, school policies on OER development, fear of copyright infringement, lack of necessary equipment and technology skills... The report also shows that the libraries themselves are quite aware of their central role in OER development. However, when considering the aspect of a community that needs connection and coordination between school libraries, the level of willingness to share resources is still limited.

To develop open educational resources in Vietnam, delegates said that it is necessary to build a national program on open educational resources, helping to create a basic foundation of technology infrastructure and initial data sources, on the basis of which universities will supplement and develop national open educational resources.

Scientists, experts and leaders of university library centers across the country enthusiastically discussed

At the same time, delegates also agreed that there should be direction and guidance from relevant agencies to implement the CC (Creative Commons Licences) licensing system in Vietnam. Along with that is the development of a toolkit to guide the creation, use and sharing of open educational resources as a handbook for all organizations and individuals who want to participate in developing these resources, as well as the construction of a national portal on open educational resources including domestic and international sources.

At the end of the workshop, Dr. Do Van Hung, Head of the Faculty of Information and Library, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, on behalf of the Organizing Committee, summarized the important contents of the workshop. The outstanding issues that need to be further implemented to promote the development of OER in the future are: community awareness and policy mechanisms. In addition, two important subjects emphasized through this workshop are university libraries and technology companies. The workshop also demonstrated the connectivity and determination in the issue of OER development through the signing of a memorandum of cooperation on open educational resources among Vietnamese universities.

Signing of Memorandum of Cooperation to Develop Open Educational Resources in Vietnam

Organizers and delegates take souvenir photos

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(*):In December 2015, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities successfully organized the International Conference"Building an open learning platform for Vietnamese higher education: policy proposals, community creation and technological solution development".This is the first conference in Vietnam to address the issue of open educational resources.